1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cartridge removably installed in an ink jet printer to supply ink when a printing head is used to carry out printing, and in particular, to a cartridge in which ink to be supplied is contained and ink not contributing to printing is collected.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an ink jet printer, if powdered paper or ink adheres to an ejection opening surface in which ink ejection openings are formed, the ejection of ink from the ejection openings may become unstable to degrade printing quality. In particular, in recent years, to achieve full color printing at a high speed, efforts have been made to increase the length of the printing head. Thus, there is a tendency to sharply increase the number of ejection openings from which ink is simultaneously ejected, thus increasing ejection frequency. Such an increase in the length of the printing head increases the amount of ink ejected per unit time and thus the amount of mist (ink mist) generated when ink is ejected. This in turn further increases the amount of mist (ink) adhering to the ejection opening surface of the printing head. Further, to form a high-quality image by improving the accuracy with which ejected ink droplets land on a printing medium, efforts have been made to reduce the spacing between the ejection opening surface and the printing medium. In these circumstances, a larger amount of ink (mist) adheres to the surface of the printing head (ejection opening surface).
Thus, to remove these attachments, a mechanism is provided which uses a wiper blade consisting of an elastic material such as rubber to periodically wipe these attachments off from the ejection opening surface (this operation will be hereinafter referred to as “wiping”). However, in particular, as more ink adheres to the ejection opening surface of the printing head, the ink cannot be sufficiently removed simply by wiping the ejection opening surface using an ordinary wiper blade.
Accordingly, it is important to provide a mechanism that removes powdered paper or waste ink wiped off from the ejection opening surface by wiping and adhering to the wiper blade, i.e. a mechanism that cleans the wiping blade. This is because cleaning the wiper blade at proper times prevents attachments from the wiper blade from disadvantageously adhering to the ejection opening surface during the next wiping.
Various such cleaning mechanisms for wiper blades have been proposed. A typical one of these proposed mechanisms comprises an absorber that abuts against a wiper blade to receive attachments (For example Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 6-237221 (1994)). However, the cleaning ability of such an absorber is limited. If it is not a precondition that this absorber is replaced as required or the absorber is not adapted to be replaced using an appropriate timing, the received attachments may adhere to the wiper blade in union with a cleaning operation. Then, it is impossible to achieve the original object to wipe the ejection surface while cleaning the wiper blade to maintain it in a cleaned condition.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 62-113554 (1987) employs an arrangement in which a carriage on which a printing head is mounted is scanned to bring a wiping blade as a first removing member into sliding contact with an ejection opening surface to remove attachments from this surface. Then, an absorber as a second removing member comes into sliding contact with the wiping blade to remove attachments already transferred to this surface. Furthermore, an absorber as a third removing member comes into sliding contact with the absorber as the second removing member to remove attachments transferred to this surface. The absorber as the third removing member is integrated with an ink cartridge having an ink bag in which ink to be supplied to the printing head is housed as well as a waste ink tank. Thus, waste ink received by the absorber as the third removing member is guided to the waste ink tank. This arrangement suppresses the contamination of the third removing member and thus of the first and second removing members. Further, the third removing member is replaced together with the ink cartridge. This makes it possible to sufficiently deal with repeated removing operations, thus allowing them to be reliably performed over a long period.
Some of the recent ink jet printing apparatuses use recording media cut to a desired size to enable full-face layout printing without any margins as in the case with silver salt photographs. This is a technique of printing an image on a sheet without any margins by laying it out on software so that a print area exceeds the width of the sheet. However, ink is ejected to the outside of the ends of printing medium or the width of the sheet in this technique, the ink ejected to the outside of the width of the sheet may be deposited on a platen to contaminate subsequently supplied recording media. Thus, an absorber is arranged at an appropriate position on the platen to absorb the ink ejected to the outside of the width of the sheet. This enables full-face layout printing without contaminating any subsequently supplied printing media.
However, the absorbing performance of such an absorber is limited. Consequently, if it is not a precondition that this absorber is replaced with a new one or the absorber is not adapted to be replaced using an appropriate timing, an ink that has failed to be absorbed may contaminate subsequently supplied printing media. In other cases, such ink may overflow in the apparatus to foul it.
Thus, International Publication WO 97/06010 discloses an arrangement comprising a cartridge in which objects to be printed (printing media) are housed and which is provided with a waste ink collecting section in which the above ink is reserved. Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2000-086819 discloses an arrangement comprising a platen on which a slit and using a cartridge in which printing media are housed and which is provided with an absorber. When this cartridge is installed in a printer main body, the absorber is set at a position corresponding to the slit. Thus, ink ejected to the outside of the ends of printing media is received by the absorber via the slit. In either of these applications, the waste ink collecting section or the absorber is replaced when the cartridge is replaced.
As described above, some conventional cartridges in which consumables (ink or printing media) of an ink jet printer are housed are provided with an absorber that receives waste ink resulting from wiping or ejected to the outside of the ends of printing media during full-face layout printing. Thus, when the cartridge is replaced, the absorber is also replaced. This prevents disadvantages caused by waste ink. However, ink which does not contribute to printing in an ink jet printer is not limited to waste ink resulting from wiping or ejected to the outside of the ends of printing media during full-face layout printing.
For example, for the purpose of reducing the size of a serial ink jet printer, or the like, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Nos. 2000-086819, described above, and 2001-146008 employs a method (hereinafter referred to as an “intermittent supply method”) in which a carriage on which a printing head is mounted is provided with a reserving section reserving a predetermined amount of ink, and a supply system is provided which intermittently supplies ink from an ink supply source to the reserving section at appropriate timings. During main scanning for printing, the ink supply system between the reserving section and the ink supply source is spatially disconnected to achieve fluid isolation between the reserving section and the ink supply source.
With this arrangement, since fluid communication is relatively frequently established and interrupted, ink supply joints of the reserving section and ink supply source are correspondingly attached and detached. Ink may adhere to these joints or may leak from them. Also, due to an unexpected contingency which may be caused by an environmental variation, a placing condition of a printer (for a portable printer, in case of bringing it) or the like, an ink seepage and an ink leakage from the ink supply joint of the ink supply source may occur. Further, it should be noted that a mist created by a printing operation may by accumulated in the vicinity of the ink supply joint of the ink supply source to form an ink drop. Alternatively, a case where the environmental variation induces a condensation around the ink supply joint of the ink supply source may be envisioned. Such adhered or leaked ink is an ink which does not contribute to printing (such non-contributable ink, including liquid such as the above-mentioned condensation, may also be referred to as an non-contributable liquid to printing). It is highly desired to adequately collect the non-contributable ink in order to avoid a soilure of an interior of a device, damage to an interior mechanism, an adhesion of ink or the like to an operator's hand and clothes, and an occurrence of color mixture of inks at the ink supply joint of the ink supply source (there may be a risk caused by the color mixture of inks at the ink supply joint to cause a color mixture of inks into the reserving section and to introduce an influence caused by the color mixture of inks into an interior of the ink supply source).